Jalen Graham and Dee Winters aren’t making 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan’s job any easier this summer.
Both linebackers enter their respective second NFL seasons with aspirations of making Shanahan’s final 53-man roster — and beyond.
That, however, isn’t guaranteed, as San Francisco continues to boast one of the NFL’s most formidable and competitive linebacker units.
“The linebacker room is really a competitive group right now, as you’ve seen,” defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen told reporters on Wednesday.
“Dee and Jalen from last year to this year progressed a lot after that rookie season. But it’s just all of them together have kind of made it competitive and progressed together.
“It’s really going to be a tough decision for us.”
Similar to Sorensen’s words, Shanahan spoke earlier this week about the roster crunching pains that linebacker Curtis Robinson’s strong preseason showing has generated.
And as Shanahan and Co. prepare to cut from a talented linebacker corps soon, the question of how Graham and Winters’ sophomore seasons look remains prevalent.
And, yes, that’s after taking in consideration that both linebackers have excelled throughout training camp and Graham stating that he’s improved substantially since his rookie year after shadowing and learning from some of the NFL’s best.
“I would say just a lot, a lot, a lot better, being able to be in a room for a whole year around great guys like coach [Johnny] Holland,” Graham told reporters.
“And then you get to watch Fred [Warner], Dre [Greenlaw] and last year [Oren Burks] fly around every Sunday, so it can do nothing but get better and learn from them.”
Perhaps in the coming weeks, neither Graham nor Winters, who didn’t contribute much defensively as rookies, will succumb to the hard realities of the business.
Instead, their improvements will position themselves in direct contention to fill in for Dre Greenlaw in the middle of the field for the first few weeks of the regular season.
After lots of work over the offseason, Graham is prepared for such scenario.
“I would like to say being in the box,” Graham said when asked what areas of the game he’s improved in.
“In college, I was more outside-in, kind of. And now, I’m just playing in the box, being comfortable in the box. How [does] the lineman get to you from being in the box [as opposed to] being outside?
“Kind of everything that goes with it — just getting better at it, seeing it and slowing it down for me. That’s been good.”